


in the kingdom of heaven

by Nautica_Dawn



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Canon Divergence - The Last Agni Kai, F/M, Fire Lord Katara, Slow Build, that one where katara winning the agni kai is recognized
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-01
Updated: 2018-11-12
Packaged: 2019-04-16 12:41:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 17,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14165061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nautica_Dawn/pseuds/Nautica_Dawn
Summary: In her later years, Katara will look back on the Agni Kai against Azula fondly. In her younger, more immediate years, she wishes she'd turned down Zuko's offer.





	1. no destinies ordained

 

.

.

.

                “What?”

                “There were witnesses to the Agni Kai,” the woman repeats. She’s not terribly old, though the glasses over her eyes and the smattering of ashy grey in her hair makes her look it. Katara thinks she’s trying to be kind about whatever new madness this is. “The challenge was for the throne, and Pr—Zuko lost. Princess Azula then challenged you, and you won. Is that inaccurate?”

                “Well, not exactly,” Katara says. She’s not sure how to explain what happened. One moment everything was fine and then lightning was rushing at her and Zuko was—

                The heat. The blue. The lightning the crackle, the smell of burning flesh. Watching Zuko fall, seeing the fire swirl, twisting angry.

                Watching Zuko fall and she reaches out, reaching, reaching—

                “Breathe,” the woman says, hands on Katara’s shoulders. “You’re safe now. It’s okay. Princess Azula has been detained. I’m merely here to confirm the outcome of the Agni Kai.”

                Katara breathes out in a shudder. She takes a step back, pulling away from the woman. “Okay. Okay. Yes, I’m the one who defeated Azula. She attacked me, and Zuko intercepted but something went wrong and he was down so I finished the fight.”

                The woman nods. “My name is An-Qi. Send for me as soon as Zuko is awake. I’ll try to keep the Sages away until then.”

                “Wait, what’s going on?”

                An-Qi looks at her with pity. Not a good sign, that is. Katara regrets leaving the room behind her when the polite knock came earlier.  The palace is an imposing place, both inside and out, and worse now that night has fallen on a world still faintly smelling like ash.

                She watches as An-Qi excuses herself, turning away and disappearing into the depths of the palace. Katara thinks this is the kind of day she’s going to remember for the rest of her life. The comet burning through the sky, the Agni Kai, the lightning, and now _this_. The secrecy and silence. The shadows and the stars.

                 But they’ve won this battle. That, at the least, is a comfort.

               

* * *

 

 

                Fifteen years An-Qi has worked for the imperial family. She quietly believes this is why the assorted historians and Sages sent her to deal with their new monarch; she's seen the most tumultuous years this kingdom has faced in living memory with and come out of it calm and collected. Which is how, despite having zero real experience in doing this sort of thing, she finds herself on the morning after the comet with a tray of breakfast for the two children hiding in the palace one of them now owns.

                She did prepare the food herself, of course. There’s no use risking someone assassinating their new leader before the coronation. With any luck, Zuko will be awake and she’ll be able to explain the Sages’ ruling.

                But, of course, life rarely goes that simply.

                The tray clatters to the ground. Porcelain teapot: shattered. Breakfast: ruined.

                “What’s going on?” An-Qi is halfway to Katara before the words are out. The girl is struggling under the weight of an unconscious Zuko, who looks a bit worse for wear. An-Qi moves to his other side, helping to hold him up. Feverish, trouble breathing, and she can see the burn scar on his chest. “Oh, don’t tell me he was hit with that bolt.”

                “Yes, he was,” Katara says. “I need to get him to water. Something’s wrong.”

                “He should be dead!”

                “Probably.”

                An-Qi sighs. “Take him to the Dragon,” she tells Katara. “To the left.”

                A series of instructions later, and An-Qi watches Katara pulls the ailing firebender into the river. It’s a careful set up, with Zuko’s head on Katara’s shoulder to keep him above water. The River Dragon glitters blue, where it runs through the stone-tiled channels in the palace. But what she’s seeing is unlike anything. The water directly around the pair turns bright as the moon, pale and swirling.

                She’d heard, of course, that truly powerful waterbenders could do this sort of thing. There’s all sorts of treatises on bending and cultural histories tucked away in places were the war could not reach them. An-Qi knows them all. The North apparently trains all their gifted daughters solely in the healing arts, while only training their sons in war, but of them all only one waterbender a generation is ever able to truly excel.

                And here is one of those Children of La.

                In time the glow fades and there’s a cough or two until Zuko’s eyes blink a few times. And then he’s awake. Katara drops beneath the river and then rises a short distance away, helping him towards the shore. The girl is impressive, certainly. An-Qi has heard the palace doctors mutter darkly about the damage lightning can inflict on the body enough times to know the boy in the water should be dead and gone several times over. And yet here he is, looking like nothing more than the healthy seventeen-year-old he is. It's humbling to know that a girl-child as small and frail as Katara is could hold such power. An-Qi had thought the sheer destructive power of Princess Azula had been a sight to behold, but seeing a girl so similar capable of equal destruction and yet still manage the rarer power of restoration is something else entirely.

               There’s a mumbled discussion between the children that she can’t quite make out, save a piece about _grabbing my heart_ from Zuko that sounds particularly painful. An-Qi makes a note to inquire as to the waterbender's full skills at a later point. 

                “Are you all right, Lady Katara?” An-Qi asks, peering down at her.

                “Fine,” she says. “Tired.” Katara pushes herself up until she’s sitting on the edge of the river. She reaches down to push heavy black hair out of Zuko's face. “Hey, you still alive?”

                Zuko bats at her hand. “Yeah, I am. Why’s the librarian out here?”

                “Imperial Historian,” An-Qi corrects. “I only sometimes work in the library.”

                “She helped save you, you idiot,” Katara says. A half-hearted wave crashes over his head. She tilts her head back to peer up at An-Qi, squinting against the morning sun. “You said you wanted to talk to us both, right?”

 

* * *

 

                Katara and Zuko follow as they’re lead deeper into the palace. He, at the least, seems to know where they’re going. Possibly. Katara stays close to him; she had to work the blood to correct his heartbeat, and while everything looks healthy, bloodbending has never been used for such a purpose. She has no idea what might result. It wasn’t designed for medical use.

                “You’re staring,” he says, voice low. “Stop that.”

                “You should be dead,” she says. “How are you still alive?”

                Zuko looks only mildly annoyed. “Lightning redirection. I messed up, but I got most of it out. How long has it been?”

                “Yesterday.”

                He looks down at the still exposed scar on his chest. It flares out around his heart, a starburst in perfect detail branded on his flesh. “Oh. Healing?”

                Katara nods. “You kind of spent most of last night dying, so yeah. She helped me get you to the river and why is there a river in a firebender’s palace?”

                “Because it was here before us,” An-Qi answers from ahead of them. “There’s an older story, if you’d like to hear it sometime, but the basic answer is that your friend’s forefathers wanted their palace here and the river was in their way.”

                Um,” Katara says. She hadn’t realized they’d gotten louder. “Sorry, but what is going on? Has there been any news from the Earth Kingdom?”

                “You are about to eat breakfast,” An-Qi says, showing them into a room. Zuko looks less than happy about this location, but he grudgingly enters first as Katara follows. “Once I go fetch a new tray. And no, there has been no news. Right now we are operating under the assumption that the Fire Nation no longer stands with Ozai. He abdicated for Princess Azula, and now that Princess Azula has lost control of the throne, we preparing for the coronation of the new Fire Lord with the expectation that the war will end then.”          

                “We?”

                “The Sages,” An-Qi explains. “Princess Azula dismissed everyone during her short reign as Fire Lord. A handful of us escaped notice and so here we are. Now if you will please excuse me.”  
  
                An-Qi gives a short bow, and then closes the door between them. Interesting. And a little weird. Katara glances around the room. Zuko’s found a seat at a desk, looking less than pleased about any of this.

                The room itself is lovely. While the room they’d been in last night had been dark and red, this one is lighter. Still dark wood, and still red, but broken up by lighter pieces of artwork and actual windows. She moves to look at a painting of a tree branch dotted with pale pink flowers, a strange script written in the top part of the scroll. Airy, that’s what this room is. It’s light and airy, for all the dark here. She can see a garden rolling out beyond the windows to the back of the room, and there’s a blue and white vase of heavy pale blooms between the windows.

                And books. So many books, all lined up behind the desk. There’s scrolls tucked in a few boxes closest to the desk and yet more books everywhere.

                “It’s a study,” Zuko says. “My father’s. This is where he did most of his work.”

                “My father has an iceberg,” she says, and then it settles. Zuko doesn’t often speak of his own father. “Wait, you mean this is your father’s? It’s beautiful in here.”

                Zuko shrugs. “I know he’s all fire and doom, but believe it or not he’s also the guy who liked to garden and read poetry.”

                “I wish I could say I have heard stranger,” Katara says. She remembers enough, though. The monsters often turn out to be human. Like father, like son. “So you know who An-Qi is?”

                “Imperial Historian, librarian, whatever,” he says. “Her family has worked here for ages, mostly as doctors. They’re the ones who,” he trails off, and finally just motions towards his left eye. “They’re the ones who took care of me after this. I normally saw her working in the library. Just didn’t know her name.”

                Katara takes a seat across from him. There’s papers scattered about the desk, some in the common language and some in that strange script. “I’ve never seen these markings before,” she says, motioning towards it.

                “Traditional Fire Nation,” Zuko explains. “You don’t see it a lot these days, but government.”  
  
                “We still use our own language,” she says. She thinks of the lines and dots, the markings along the blankets kept hidden. “The North was horrible. I didn’t understand a word when they stopped using Common.”

                “Common is best for conquering and trade.”

                “Can you read it?”

                “Yes, but I’m not going to.”

                The door behind them slides open. Katara’s on her feet, ready to fight, but it’s only An-Qi with a tray of food.

                An-Qi, who looks at Zuko with a quelling stare. “My apologies, Lady Katara. I have been meaning to ask about your education. I’ll need to know what subjects we’ll have to cover. If Zuko is unwilling to help with the language, I can find a scribe to work with you.”

                “Thank you,” Katara says. For the food. She isn't sure what to make of the education remark. She reaches out to help with the tray, but An-Qi moves it out of the way and sets up breakfast on her own, the papers gathered up and removed from the table before Katara can do anything. “You said Azula sent everyone away?”

                An-Qi nods. She picks up the tea pot before Katara can, deftly pouring two cups. “Once every century we go through the Dragonbone Catacombs to archive the imperial treasures and update the records.”

                “She doesn’t need to know this,” Zuko interrupts.

                Katara has no response to that. They’d been doing so well, not fighting or snipping at each other, and now this. But An-Qi has no such reservations. “Hold your tongue. She has more rights to this information than you.”

                Silence settles into the room.

                Katara and Zuko exchange a glance. She has no idea what’s happening, and from his expression he—is starting to figure something out. It’s the same expression she saw when he realized how ill-prepared Aang was. That expression, she's learned, never bodes well for anyone. 

                “Why haven’t you been addressing him by his title?” she asks, looking up at An-Qi. “You’ve been calling Azula _princess_ , but you’ve only been calling Zuko by his name.”

“The Sages have reached a verdict,” An-Qi says. “They’ve taken testimony from all of us and established the facts. I merely need to confirm with Zuko the terms of the Agni Kai.”

                His eyes are closed and he’s pinching the bridge of his nose. Katara has a sinking feeling about all of this. It crawls up her spine, up her scalp until every bit of her feels on alert. Something’s wrong. Something is very, very wrong.

                “It was for the throne,” Zuko says, finally. “Winner take all.”

                An-Qi nods. “And Lady Katara’s role?”

                “Witness.”

                “Except she was within the boundaries of the fight the entire time.”

                Zuko sighs. He still won’t look at her. “Yes.”

                “And Princess Azula attacked her unprovoked?”

                “I provoked her,” Zuko says.

                An-Qi shakes her head. “No, not you. Did Lady Katara herself provoke Princess Azula?”

                “No.”

                “So Princess Azula decided, independently, to treat Lady Katara as a challenger?”

                That sinking feeling is getting worse. Katara watches this back and forth and she wants to disappear into her seat. If only she could turn herself to mist. That would be wonderful right now. Turn into a mist and reform far, far away from here.

                “Yes,” Zuko eventually answers.

                An-Qi folds her hands in front of her. “At this point you were gravely injured and unable to continue fighting?” another affirmative. “And it was Lady Katara who defeated Princess Azula, after being treated as a challenger independent of you?”

                The quiet stretches on, but eventually Zuko nods. “Yes.”

                “What are you saying?” Katara says, looking between the two of them.

                “You won a battle for the throne,” An-Qi says, gently. “The Sages have agreed. There was an Agni Kai to determine the leader of this nation, and you won.”

                “For Zuko.”

                An-Qi shakes her head. “Unless those terms were made clear at the beginning, authorizing you to act as champion, then no. From what we’ve heard, Princess Azula was challenged by Zuko and Zuko alone, and when he fell, she opened the challenge to you. You then accepted and defeated her. Thus, you are now the Fire Lord.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're familiar with dynasty, know that this one is not related in any way except with a connection to chapter 21 of the game has changed. I told you in the notes there was going to be a new fic based on something Zuko said, and so here it is!
> 
> I know a lot happens in this chapter, but I swear that's only because there's a lot of crazy things happening right now in this fic and Katara is sort of at the center of it. 
> 
> It always kind of bothered me that there was zero recognition that Katara had won that fight when Zuko technically lost. Yes, you could argue that Azula violated the terms and thus forfeited to Zuko, but I've always wondered if the reality were a bit more complex. Because if so, then you've got this situation here, in which Katara has accidentally conquered the Fire Nation during their hour of glory.
> 
> I have absolutely zero idea as to what's going to happen in this fic, other than Katara potentially going grey from stress way too young. And maybe another war. 
> 
> As for An-Qi having a POV, that was not an easy choice to make. I've always known in dynasty there's going to have be some OC-POVs, but not for a long while yet. Here I just needed someone other that Katara who actually knows what's going on and isn't, y'know, Azula. Not to say Azula won't eventually get a POV scene, but this chapter I had multiple problems avoiding infodump and An-Qi was about the only one who could dodge it in that scene.


	2. the setting sun

.

.

.

 

                “I can’t be the Fire Lord.”

                “I agree.”

                Katara stops her pacing and spins around to face Zuko. They’ve not left his father’s— _the_ study—since An-Qi came and went. And it’s been a series of exchanges just like this ever since.

                He looks up from where he’s standing, leaning back against a window. “But there’s no way around it, not if the Sages are agreed.”

                “You’ve got to be kidding me,” she says.

                “Nope,” Zuko says. “Trust me, I wish I were. With things like this, the Sages’ word is final. And there were witnesses.”

                “Can’t I just refuse?”

                “Then you forfeit and the throne goes back to Azula,” he says. “That’s how a three-way Agni Kai works. As the challenged, Azula wins if we both lose or forfeit.”

                “But what about you?” Katara says. “You’re the real challenger here.”

                “I no longer have standing,” Zuko says. “I lost first, which means the final outcome was between you and Azula.” She’s about to ask a new question, but Zuko apparently sees it coming. “And no, I can’t challenge you for the throne. When I lost, I lost everything. I’m not a prince, or even a nobleman anymore. I’m just no one. Again.”

                “That’s ridiculous.”

                He just nods in response.

                “Who was this Fire Lord Zuzen she was talking about?” Katara asks. An-Qi had mentioned him as a precedent for this situation, but the reference went over her head. A lot, she thinks, has gone over her head today.

                “Pre-war by a long, long time,” Zuko says. “He was in charge when the South split from the North. His cousin was the newly crowned Fire Lord, but his brother challenged the cousin. Zuzen was accidentally drawn in and won.”

                Which is essentially what happened here. “But he wasn’t a foreigner. Can a waterbender even be Fire Lord?”

                “Normally no,” he says. “It’s only being allowed this time because you became Fire Lord by conquest, not by inheritance.”

                “I’m barely fifteen.”

                “Azula is still fourteen.”

                Katara throws her hands up.

                What has she done to deserve this? She went to help a friend win back his birthright and now she’s gone and stolen it without meaning to.

                And then there’s the rest.

                “What are we going to do?”

                At that, Zuko sighs. He’s been in a mood since the verdict was announced. Not that she can blame him. An-Qi had made it clear the coronation needs to happen sooner rather than later, if only so they can start issuing orders to the military before news from the Earth Kingdom arrives. Katara is inclined to agree. Aang was missing before the comet, so they have no idea what’s happened. Ozai had every advantage when he marched.

                But so did Azula.

                Katara shakes off the thought. Azula was a single, unstable firebender. Ozai has an entire army marching with him. Her brother can pull off miracles sometimes, but in this, they need Aang.

                “We’ll go through with the Sages’ plan,” he says. “We’ll figure out something later. Right now we just need to get things under control. The last thing we need is to be caught off-guard.”

                “I think we’re pretty far past _off-guard_.”

                Zuko ignores that. “I challenged Azula to save this kingdom. I don’t like any of this, but I’m not about to let things be ruined just because you’re the Fire Lord.”

 

* * *

 

 

                “It’s going to be in your best interest to downplay the Water Tribe for a bit,” An-Qi says. Katara has no idea where anything has come from, but after being informed that both Katara and Zuko accepted the ruling, she disappeared again and returned with several other women in tow.

                Which had led to this: Katara has no idea where Zuko was dragged off to, but Katara has been pushed into a bath with two women scrubbing at her hair and body and a third working on a mass of red fabric. An-Qi has pulled up a chair and sits well out of splash range, reading off of a scroll.

                “But I’m a waterbender,” Katara says. She’s already agreed to take off her necklace for the bath, albeit on the condition the heirloom stay within An-Qi’s possession until Katara is out. She eyes the blue, and wishes for the familiar weight around her neck. “And Southern. You know, the people who have been almost wiped out by the Fire Nation?”

                An-Qi looks up at that. Katara doesn’t see much else; she’s pushed under water and resurfaces with suds rolling down her face. “You’re Southern?” An-Qi says. “It was reported the last Southern waterbender was killed years ago.”

                “I’m still here,” Katara says. This time she gets a breath in before she’s pushed under, this time for longer as bony hands scrub at her scalp for the third time. She pops up as soon as the hands retreat. “My father is the Chief. It helped protect me.”

                Everyone goes still at that.

                Katara looks around as much as she can. She’d thought that, at this point, stories would have spread. The Avatar, the Southern Chief’s two children, the Bei Fong heiress, the Captain of the Kyoshi Warriors, and the Crown Prince of the Fire Nation have been running all over the place for the last year. News spreads faster than the wind in the Earth Kingdom. The North can be written off as simply being the North. But the Fire Nation is at war with the world. How could they be so unknowing as to life beyond the isles?

                “Your father is the Chief?” An-Qi says. “You’re descended from Lady Iara?”

                Katara’s mouth drops open at that. Her head is jerked back slightly as one of the women behind her tugs at a knot, but Katara resists going underwater.

                _How_. Iara is cursed in the North and revered in the South and lived thousands of years ago, but her name has been nonexistent outside of the Tribes for ages. She is their origin, the first Southerner, and the line from Iara to Katara is a straight line in blood. Her Tribe raised her to know where she came from. Her grandfather’s people were a proud clan. Decimated by the war, but proud and still here.

                Always here.

                “How do you know that?”

                An-Qi gives her a flat look. “Historian, remember? I’m not restricted to the Fire Nation. This is good. Quite good. The nobles will be more likely to acquiesce once they learn they have been conquered by a foreign royal and not a foreign peasant.”

                “So no downplaying the Water Tribe?”

                “Yin, please see about adding some blue into Her Majesty’s dresses,” An-Qi says to the seamstress.

                “There won’t be time with this one," the seamstress says. "I'm adapting one of Princess Azula’s dresses. It’s a blessing the two of you are so close in size.”

                “Alright,” one of the women who’s been scrubbing at Katara’s head says. “She’s done here. Let’s get her out.”

                Katara tries her best to follow along as she’s wrapped in a pale robe, hands moving all around her as a sash is tied tight around her waist and something that feels vaguely like silk is put over her hair. An-Qi follows along as she’s led into another room and pushed down onto a small cushion.

                An-Qi stays standing this time, looking over all the work the women are doing. “I have a draft of the orders to withdraw from the war, as well as letters to both of the Water Tribes and the Earth Kingdom informing them of the Fire Nation’s new status.”

                “That’s not going to be easy,” Katara says. “The North is the North and King Kuei is in hiding. My Father is somewhere out on the open ocean.”

                “You’re not fond of the Northern Water Tribe, are you?”

                “I’m Southern. There’s a million and one reasons to not like the North.”

                The ladies working on her hair try and fail to stifle their laughter. Katara wonders, not for the first time, what people know about the Tribes and the relationship between North and South.

                “Thank you, Zhou, Maru,” An-Qi says. “We will need to begin making plans for the military. The Sages are working on coming up with a new war council, and I would recommend Zuko be added to any discussions. Despite the fall of the Zhulong, he is still a naval officer.”

                “Zhulong?” 

                “They’ve ruled the Fire Nation for a thousand years,” An-Qi says. “You should be thinking of your own dynasty. The Zhulong have officially fallen, and the people will need to know the kingdom is stable in the days to come.”

                “Even though I’ve only been here for a day?” Katara says. The women are pulling her hair up and off of her back, twisting and pinning with precision. She wishes she could see what they’re doing. “Isn’t this going awfully fast?”

                An-Qi nods. “Yes, it is. Historically there would be a transition year for when a new Fire Lord ascends the throne, however this is time we cannot afford. Rumours from the Earth Kingdom should begin arriving within the next few days, and we’re expecting formal news by the end of next week at the earliest. We need you established, with a plan before then.”

                “You’re preparing for the worst,” Katara says. An-Qi nods again. “What will happen if the Earth Kingdom has fallen?”

                “We’ll be skipping the traditional ceremonies for a coronation,” An-Qi says, after a moment. “We can complete them when you eventually marry. For now, you will be crowned in a private ceremony with only a few witnesses and the Sages. After, you will sign the letters to the other nations and then we will be sending them immediately with the fastest hawks we have.”

                “And the army?”

                “That we can deal with after,” An-Qi tells her. “I wish I could give you more time to adjust. Truly, I do.”

                She still hasn’t answered the question. Katara isn’t sure she wants to know, anyway. The Earth Kingdom is powerful in ways no other nation is. If it has fallen, it may very well mean destruction across the world. The war will go on. Katara thinks of Jang Hui, of the desperation in the poorer islands. Of the Southern Water Tribe, of the ruins at Taku. Of Princess Yue, her mother, Gyatso, and even Jet. 

                “You want the war to end,” she says. She looks at An-Qi, then at the women who have finished with her hair. “All of you. You all want it to end.”

                “That’s why we’re here,” one of the women says. Katara thinks it might be Zhou. “Only the military likes the war.”

                “General opinion has been low for some time now,” An-Qi says. “While Lord Azulon managed to keep the nation afloat in his reign, it has not been any secret how damaging Ozai’s reign has been.”

                “How bad?” Katara asks.

                An-Qi shakes her head. “We’ll talk about it after the coronation. You’ll have full access to the ledgers after that.”

           

* * *

 

 

                She looks the part; he’ll give her that. With her hair pulled all the way back and wrapped in the dark red of the royal family, Katara looks several years older than Zuko knows her to be. It’s mildly disconcerting, how natural she looks in the temple, surrounded by the red and fire of his people.

                 Would the Sages have been this insistent on a fast coronation if he were the Fire Lord? Zuko has heard the rumours, of course, about the disagreements between the clergy and his father. _Ozai has ruined the dynasty_ , they’ve said, _there’s no saving it now_. It wasn’t that long ago that _sins of the father_ was still a valid reason to deny someone basic rights.

                And Azula’s short reign certainly didn’t help.

                So this is how it ends. A thousand years of history, of the Zhulong dynasty being the face of the Fire Isles, and it ends with a waterbender wearing a style of dress he hasn’t seen outside of paintings a hundred years old. They’re being accommodating of her ancestry; her outer robe trails behind her and shows a rolling ocean across a red sky.

                He squints.

                “Stop that,” An-Qi hisses. “You’re here to support her, not look like you’ve bitten a lemon.”

                “Is that from the archives?”

                An-Qi sighs. “Yes, it is. We had to adapt one of your sister’s gowns and there wasn’t time to make it look appropriate.”

                “So you’re covering it with the robe,” he says, voice kept low. The Sages are almost through the second set of prayers. “Is there a reason you all seem to hate me?”

                “You set a priceless Yan dynasty handscroll on fire,” An-Qi says. She doesn’t look at him.

                “What?” Zuko looks up to where Katara is finally kneeling, waiting for the final prayers. A female Sage he doesn’t recognize has picked up the familiar five-pronged flame.

                It’s easy to forget, sometimes, that the palace isn’t just his home. There are families that have lived here for as many generations as his has. The woman beside him was very likely born within the same walls he was. They apparently met, maybe, when he was still too young to fully remember. This is a strange world, this kingdom.

                And now a stranger is in charge of it all.

                The flame is slid into Katara’s hair, and a new dawn has officially broken.

               

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am about to start chapter six of this and without an actual plot yet. So...I don't know? Slice of life with a ton of politics and history thrown in? Maybe a rebellion, but also maybe just not? I really don't know. I probably need to focus less on pre-war Fire Nation history and on the more immediate history that will cause more problems. 
> 
> As far as the fashion goes: for Katara's primary look later on, I'm going to be going off one of te-al-latte's work of a Fire Lady Katara. And on fashion, can I just say, the Korra years are a bloody nightmare? Canon uses way too many Western influences in a world that has no white people and an East Asian majority. And some of the tech is problematic because, uh, China kind of had some of that way before Europe did so logically it probably exists in the ATLA world ages before Korra. Or, in short, I'm trying to redo the evolution of ATLA/LOK without the weird sudden European influences (see the settler fantasy that is north and south. wtf is that). If you guys know of any good resources or references for that, please share in the comments.


	3. a road to somewhere

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those of you who also follow dynasty of storms: I'm rewriting everything. Sarsaparillia and I started working on a unified timeline for our ATLA fics and pretty quickly noticed some massive, massive problems that have made a lot of the original plot...uh, a little nonviable. This fic will also be following that adjusted timeline with the corresponding changes in characterization.

 

 

                The hawks are sent out just before sundown. Katara watches them for as long as she can, trying not to think about the words they carry and what the fallout might be. The crown she now wears is surprisingly light, but at the same time all the history and meaning crushes down on her.

                The ledgers were worse than An-Qi suggested. As it turns out, all anyone knew were rumors, but Katara’s now seen the official versions. Zuko had to translate the writings, but numbers have been universal since long before the first Fire Lord rose to power.

                There’s no money. At all. None. Katara grew up in one of the damaged nations, and she knows there will be demands for reparations. Nations and clans aren't so different when it comes to things like this. The South might back off because of her, but the Earth Kingdom has the fall of Ba Sing Se and Omashu, of Taku and the Fire Nation broke the outer wall of Ba Sing Se. And then the North.

                Katara groans, and leans against the railing. Her hands cover her head, and she can just barely feel the cold metal flame with the tips of her fingers, breaking her concentration. It's a reminder of where she is, of what's happened. Even if she could ignore her surroundings, the sharp glass shard cold of the South Pole is a memory dulled by months spent in the sluggish heat most of the world exists in.

                “I should have warned you,” Zuko says. She can hear the door sliding closed behind him. “I knew it was going to be bad.”

                “And you were going to try and do all of this alone?”

                He doesn’t look at her when she finally faces him. “I would have Uncle.”

                “This is more than just two people, Zuko,” Katara says. “What was your grandfather _thinking_ , gutting farms like that? Was it really so impossible to imagine a world where the Fire Nation might not win the war?”

                “Yes.”

                Katara screams through clenched teeth.

                “Sorry,” Zuko says. He looks a little more like the awkward kid who joined them, like this. “The colonies have supplied most of our raw materials for the last century. They have the good farmland.”

                “And about every other piece of manufacturing that doesn’t require firebenders,” she snaps. “Why the colonies? What were you going to do about any of that? Hope the Earth Kingdom lets you keep the colonies? Hope the people living there are loyal to the Fire Nation?”

                “I don’t know!” he says. “I hadn’t actually thought about that.”

                “You hadn’t thought about it? Zuko, you went into a battle for the throne without a plan?”

                “I didn’t know if I would survive,” he says. “We still don’t know what happened in the Earth Kingdom. All of this could go up in flames.”

                “It already has.”

                Katara turns back towards the railing. The palace is a misnomer, she’s decided. Within the white walls, there are in fact several palaces and many more gardens and pavilions. It is beautiful, though. Especially like this, when the sunset paints the white with purples and blues, reds and oranges. She can’t quite understand how a place of such beauty could give so much pain and horror to the world, but it has.

                And now that pain and horror has come home.

                “You saw the projections,” Katara says. “Just look at the maps. Even if Ozai lost, the Fire Nation is going to collapse. There’s not enough food, not enough medicine. There’s not even enough housing to bring all the soldiers home. And all of that is assuming the military is even going to listen to us.”

                “To you,” he says. “They’re going to have to listen to you.” He steps up beside her, leaning against the railing. “We came here to try and save the Fire Nation.”

                “We did,” she agrees. “This wasn’t how it was supposed to go.”

                “No, but we’ve got to make it work.”

                She nods, and finally takes a look at him. He’s so young, when he’s here. It’s in the way he stands; he’d been tense and guarded, but now there’s a gentle slope to the shoulder. A straighter spine, and an ease of movement.

                “You’re really sure we can do this,” she says. “Are you insane? We don’t know what’s happening anywhere else. This kingdom is about to collapse with disease and starvation everywhere, assuming we don’t have a rebellion on our hands. We’re just two kids, Zuko.”

                “Yeah, and we already took down Azula, which should have been impossible,” he says. “We have the Sages, the imperial historians, and wow that sounds worse when I say it out loud.” He pinches the bridge of his nose, and a tense edge climbs into the space between them. “Do you have any idea where half the servants you’ve seen came from?”

                “No?” she says. “They aren’t from before Azula?”

                He shakes his head.

 

* * *

 

 

                Three days later, they get the answer.

                “Most of them are, actually,” An-Qi says, stepping into the study where Zuko and Katara are still reviewing ledgers and maps, and still discussing the origins of most of the servants. She’s holding another set of papers in her hands, and Katara feels ready to climb into a pile of blankets and hide forever. “There are several families like mine, who have worked here generation after generation. Yin’s family, for instance, have clothed the royal family for the better part of six centuries. Zhou’s family have been members of the Imperial Guard for about the same time. Maru’s have been groundskeepers here for the last three hundred years.”

                “Seriously?” Katara asks.

                An-Qi nods. “The caldera is a city unto itself. You have the Heavenly City here, and the Imperial City surrounding it. Outside of the caldera, you have the port city where the majority of the capital’s citizens live. The majority of the servants live in the Imperial City, with only the most vital living in the Heavenly City alongside the royal family.”

                “Kitchen staff, physicians, some guards, the clothiers,” Zuko says, listing them off on his hands. “If there are royal children in residence, then their tutors, nurses, whatever will live here. Most of us had a dedicated secretary once we came of age and they’d stay near us at all times.”

                “We only have a skeleton crew right now,” An-Qi explains. She glances behind herself, towards the hall. “Princess Azula sent everyone away, including most of the Imperial City. We are working to find as many as we can who are willing to return.”

                “And how many of them have agreed?” Katara asks. “Specifically the guards.”

                “The Yu-Yan Archers have already reaffirmed their support for the throne. They don’t care who is issuing orders, just so long as they’re paid on time and not overlooked for work,” An-Qi says. “We’ve managed to convince a handful of experienced guards, but most of our recruits are new. And then we have the naval men loyal to Vice Admiral Zuko.”

                “I’m sorry, what?” Zuko asks. “I’m pretty sure I don’t hold any title and we’re just ignoring that it’s now illegal for me to be here.”

                An-Qi shakes her head. “The Sages have elected a new Head Sage, and she found these while going through her predecessor’s things.”

                The papers she sets down are only part of the stack she’s carrying. Katara can’t read a word of it; the librarian teaching her Traditional Fire has only just started the alphabet. But Zuko seems to know what it is, and she watches him trace down the paper to a signature she’s come to recognize as Ozai’s, and then a blank space below it.

                “They’re not authorized,” Zuko says, wonder in his voice. “They’re signed but they’re not authorized.”

                “Do we want to share?” Katara asks.

                “Ozai filed to have Zuko stripped of all ranks and removed from the family record,” An-Qi explains. “But the cogs of bureaucracy have worked in the Vice Admiral’s favour. The former Head Sage didn’t have a chance to approve the blacklisting and the new one has decided to pretend these don’t exist.”

                Katara sees the smoke before the sparks, but by the time she turns, the papers have disintegrated into ash. Zuko sighs in relief and leans back in his chair, head tilted back. She can’t imagine what this has to be like, for him. At risk of losing absolutely everything, and so convinced that was reality, only to find there is still hope. 

                (Maybe. They've not really talked about the throne.)

                Or, no, maybe she does. It was no secret in the village that another attack would likely be the end of the Southern Water Tribe. There were only a handful of children, and with no men and unmarried women fleeing for better opportunities in the Earth Kingdom, they had little reason to expect anything to get better. Without someone strong enough to withstand the Fire Nation, there was no reason to hope.

                And then she broke that iceberg.              

                “This is good,” she says, a little slow. "Right?"

                An-Qi nods. “Given that the Vice Admiral is currently the highest ranked member of the navy, due to all higher ranked officers joining the invasion force, he is now your highest ranked military official. Which means you are in fact entitled to be here assisting Her Majesty.”

                “Oh, good. I don’t have to worry about execution,” Zuko says. “Just the possibility we’re all going to die in an inferno when that invasion force returns.”

                “Which is why the navy is our most important asset,” An-Qi says.

                “The sea,” Katara says. She shuffles through the papers for the map of the isles. Land makes little sense to her, but the sea is home and the sea she knows. The sea has been the defense system her people have relied on for time immemorial. “Do we have enough ships to form a blockade? And sailors to man them?”

                From the corner of her eye, she sees An-Qi hand the rest of the papers to Zuko.

                “Yes and no,” Zuko says, looking through them. “We don’t have enough battleships, but we do have most of the coastal defense. Most of those are outdated cruisers because of course they are. Why do we have no dreadnoughts?”

                “Invasion force,” An-Qi answers. “Third section. You’ll see they’ve all either been wrecked in the last few months or they’re currently off the eastern shore of the Earth Kingdom.”

                “Wrecked?” Zuko asks, and then looks at Katara. “I don’t want to know. We’re just going to pretend we don’t know.”

                Katara resists the urge to stick out her tongue at him. “If we had more waterbenders, we could make it work.”

                “But we do have firebenders,” Zuko says, flipping to a new section. “But not enough to man a proper blockade. If we had more weapons we could probably do it with all the soldiers we still have. We've still got the Gates of Azulon, so we can probably hold the port and the caldera. And that’s hoping the invasion force has had losses.”

                “But it'll work?" she asks. "Even for just a little while, will it work?"

                Zuko leans back in his chair, and then reaches for the map, making markings across the sea. She'll take that as a  _yes_. 

               

* * *

 

 

                By the end of the week, they have no rumors from the Earth Kingdom. More people have moved in to the caldera, and things have almost settled into a routine. She wakes up just before dawn, and joins Zuko for morning training. Then it’s breakfast, silent screaming at the incompetence of earlier administrations, lunch, more silent screaming, lessons, and then a walk through a garden An-Qi calls the Northern Sanctuary.

                Which is, as Katara’s discovered, the home of the Head Sage.

                “You’re distracted.”

                “Sorry,” Katara says. The Sage beside her is the new Head Sage, an older woman called Inoue. Katara recognizes her from the coronation, maybe. “I was just thinking about the Earth Kingdom.”

                Inoue taps her arm. “I’m sure everything will be just fine. You’ve shown real potential. I’ve been meaning to ask if this is normal for the Water Tribes.”

                “If you mean making practical decisions, then yes. At least in the South,” Katara explains. “We’ve kind of been slaughtered over the last century and all our men have been off fighting for years. Even before, they’d be gone for months at a time hunting and trading. That’s kind of how things are divided. The sons of the family lead hunts and face the world, but the daughters ensure the survival of the people.”

                “Once we were the opposite,” Inoue tells her. “In the Fire Isles, we kept our men at home to lead the people, but the daughters voyaged out to find new islands. It’s said all one hundred islands were discovered and settled this way.”

                Katara thinks back to the maps she’s been staring at for the last week. “There aren’t a hundred islands. There’s maybe thirty.”

                Inoue gives her a sly look. “Yes, well, all the tiny islands made building difficult, so we pushed them all together. Why do you think our main island is so big?”

                And this is why she likes these walks. Inoue Is a delightful old woman with a sense of humour. Katara thinks back to Ashuna, the woman who taught her all the traditions of the South. There’s a grace in the smile, and a strength in every line of their skin. She’s always wished to grow up like that. To be one of those older women that no one dares question even when she never raises her voice, never speaks a harsh word.

                The only downside to these walks is the feeling like she’s being watched the entire time. She’s gotten used to the guards, Zhou and her sisters protect this area. Partly for Inoue’s safety, and partly for the person responsible for the eeriness. Katara looks up towards the shaded Palace of Tranquility. Such an apt name for the place imprisoning the least tranquil person she’s ever met.

                Azula stands at one of the open bays on the second story. Her hair is loose around her, cropped short to hide the damage she inflicted on it herself. Even from this distance, she looks so small without the spiked mantle on her shoulders. Katara hasn’t tried speaking to her since the battle. Instead it has been this, her daily walks observed by the fallen royal.

                “She’s still not speaking,” Inoue says, peering around Katara to look at Azula. “We have been trying.”

                “I know,” Katara says. “Don’t expect anything soon. I think she’s waiting to hear from the Earth Kingdom.”

                Inoue sighs. “It will be another week at the least. Possibly more, if there were heavy losses on the victorious side. We must pray that news takes longer.”

                “What?” Katara asks. The Sage is looking intently towards the central shrine, and they continue walking through the gardens, past flowerbeds of late fire lilies and bright red hydrangea. “You want us to stay like this? At any time we could be under siege.”

                “And every moment we have without news, we have to prepare,” Inoue says. “Right now, there is no one looking over your shoulder. The problems we know are coming have not yet come. We can plan, we can begin to work towards the future we all want. We can make sure we are not caught unawares.”

                “Which we’re doing,” Katara says. So much silent screaming about agriculture or the lack thereof. About where to build affordable housing for veterans, about where to find all the healers they will be needing. “We’re stockpiling food for distribution. We’ve got most of the palace staff in place and the domestic military is starting to respond to their new orders.”

                Inoue nods. “All good first steps. But you still have one major problem,” she says, motioning towards Azula. “She is still the Crown Princess. All it takes is one assassin to reinstall her as Fire Lord.”

                “Please don’t remind me.”

                “We have been talking about a possible solution,” Inoue says. “The general opinion is that you have faced too many forced changes and that enforcing another so soon would be too much.”

                “We’ve only got a little bit of time before the war comes home,” Katara says. “How bad could it be?”

               

* * *

 

 

                _How bad could it be_ , he’d thought. The answer: worse. Zuko knows, logically, that this whole situation is bad. They have a sixteen-year-old waterbender as Fire Lord, his sister only nominally imprisoned in the home of the Head Sage, and are very possibly about to be attacked by their own soldiers led by his father.

                And his job is replacing all of the officers who joined the invasion force.

                In front of him is the third draft of a proposal to open up the higher ranks to women. They’ve traditionally only been allowed on the domestic force, but they simply don’t have the men to replace all of the upper echelons of the military. He knows Katara will approve it; he had a front row seat watching her go from untrained child to terrifyingly powerful master. But tradition demands the proposal, and he's remembering why he hated studying legal writings. 

                “Why did I agree to this?” he mutters, running his hands through his hair.

                An-Qi looks up from where she’s sorting the census data. “Because someone has to do it and you are the highest ranked member of the military.”

                “Which is still absurd,” he tells her. “Do we have no one with combat experience?”

                “Beyond you? Only those which we shouldn’t hire,” she says. “I somehow doubt Her Majesty would appreciate the Southern Raiders.”

                “Definitely not,” Zuko says. He still has nightmares about that, sometimes. He’d known before then that Katara is a formidable opponent. But it’s one thing to know someone is powerful, and quite another to watch her manipulate the blood in a man’s veins and then go on to weaponize the weather.

                His ancestors built their war on the assumption that fire is the strongest element. All he can think is that none of them ever met a master waterbender.

                “Remind me to just get rid of the Southern Raiders,” he says. “After all of this.”

                “Their flag is now a sign of disgrace,” she says. Her pile of rejects is growing larger. It doesn’t bode well for his search for new officers. “They were celebrated for killing the last Southern waterbender. Now she is their Lord. That is not a defeat anyone can recover from."

                “No, I guess it isn’t.” Zuko looks down at the draft again. “Can we just do this later? I’ve got some things I need to run past Katara.”

                An-Qi nods, removing her glasses. “They should have dinner ready soon,” she says. “And, Vice Admiral, there is something I wish to speak to you about regarding your sister.”

                “She’s repenting and has decided to renounce all claim to the throne?”

                “No.”

                Zuko sighs. “Worth a shot.”

                “But the Sages may have found a way to move her down the line of succession,” An-Qi says.

                Azula being moved down? “That would require a new heir,” he says. “Unless there’s another way I don’t know of.”

                “I just ask that you hear me out,” An-Qi says, “and give the idea some thought.”

               

               

               

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So on some of the timeline notes. It's worth noting that officially, North and South have been divided for most of history. And since Bryke gave us 10K years to work with, that means North and South have had thousands and thousands of years to evolve into different nations. As in, they will have different cultures, different language, different religions, and given the geographic distance, it is highly unlikely that North and South can ever coexist as one people. 
> 
> And as for Zuko being in the navy: we know he was technically the captain of his ship and given that Iroh and Lu Ten both served in the military, it's not too much of a stretch to assume that Zuko, who was never expected to be Fire Lord (either by being fourth in line behind Iroh, Lu Ten, and Ozai, or by being behind Azula) might have been set for a naval career. Captain is an officer position, and this is being built on the assumption that when Zuko was restored to the royal family in S3 that he was elevated in naval rank as well. 
> 
> I like Inoue. Not her real name by a long shot (I'm not sure there will be room here, but it was the temple she started at. It was destroyed after crossing Azulon in the wrong way). She's kind of fun and a little weird in a good way.
> 
> Part of the timeline issue was looking at probable travel times and the only logical timeline put Katara at barely sixteen by the end of the series. Alternatively, she has a later birthday and just turns sixteen soon after the comet. Which works too, so I might just go with that. Canon's weird idea that seasons are the same on either side of the equator seriously troubles me and always has, so Katara's birthday in the northern hemisphere is in summer, like it would be in any world with a properly tilted rotating axis (a lack of or fixed tilt that doesn't vary as earth's does would result in either the poles being locked in a permanent night, or just the north or south being locked and seasons would be permanent across the world in both scenarios.)


	4. surface tension

.

.

.

 

 

                Katara looks at the bushels and jars, and hopes it is enough.

                “How much rice do we have?” she asks, looking back down at the list that’s been scribbled on by at least five different hands. “And there’s the request for vinegar on Moeru Island.”

                “For their pickles,” Tsuta says. The head chef has her sleeves rolled up, and Katara watches as she rolls a large pottery jar onto her shoulder before setting it down beside the rice bushels. “We’ll be wanting to send that vinegar. Those pickles are handy things during the monsoon season.”

                “Kunji Island is asking for salt and more rice,” Katara bites down on the tip of her brush. “We don’t have more rice, do we?”

                Tsuta shakes her head. “No. We’ve the salt, but the rice is already sorted. We’ve mostly just got spices and fresh things that can’t be shipped left.”

                “Is there livestock we can send out?”

                “Some,” Tsuta says. “But we’ve still got to eat, Your Majesty.”

                Katara looks up at that. “We have the sea,” she says. “This is an island nation surrounded by rich waters. Are you seriously telling me there’s no history of eating fish?”

                “Among the lower classes, yes.”

                “Then the upper classes are going to have to learn,” she says. She thinks of the South and the meager winters, of the muttered stories of a better time when they could prepare for the long dark. “Food production has to be domestic. I’ll go out fishing myself if needed. You do know how to prepare fish, or do I need to be bringing you cleaned fish?”

                “I know how to do it. I grew up on Hira’a.” Tsuta says. She puts her hands on her hips. “You do know how to find clams and shellfish, don’t you? Abundant little beasts, and versatile at that.”

                “I know how to build crab pots.”

                “So do most of the children on the outer isles.”

                “If it can’t be caught in those,” Katara says, “then I don’t know how to find it. We don’t have beaches like here in the South Pole.”

                Tsuta nods. “Talk to your guard dog. I can take you down to the water and show you what to look for if he’ll agree.”

                That takes Katara a moment to decipher. She knows it means Zuko, but the exact implication takes a bit longer to set in. Is this how people are going to see them? The Admiral and the Fire Lord. She’s avoided asking how people viewed Zuko when he was Crown Prince, though bits and pieces have come through. Black koala sheep being the most common. Given how quickly people have adapted to him being in command of the navy, she’s beginning to suspect that a Fire Lord Zuko was never expected.

                And as for the _guard dog_ comparison, there is someone apparently out there talking about the Agni Kai.

                They’re into the second week of the post-war. Or what she’s liking to think of as a post-war. The Isles have largely been focused on the _no more war_ part, and not the _there’s a waterbending Fire Lord_ part. At least she’s hoping that’s the case, and not that An-Qi has been sorting out the mail to hide things.

                “I’d like that,” Katara says. “Zuko might come with us.”

                “That’s what a good guard dog does,” Tsuta says, stepping gingerly over the assorted goods they’ve pulled. “They follow their masters.”

                “Are there any dogs here?” Katara asks. She’s not overly sure what the fauna situation is in the isles. She’s been focused on plants for so long she thinks she might be able to list them all: red ginger, sea hibiscus, volcanic plums, dead fish vine. It's rich land here, albeit not much of it. The only thing they don’t have is rice, at least not in great enough quantities to be helpful.

                Tsuta leads her out of the storeroom and up the stairs. “Yeah, we’ve got a few. They’re rare here. Nobles don’t like the barking, and most of them are used for work. Do they have them in the South Pole?”

                “Polar dogs, yeah,” she says. “And Polar Bear Dogs, but those are more likely to eat you than go home with you.”

                “Tiger dogs are most common here,” An-Qi says. She’s standing at the top of the stairs, looking highly displeased. “Which you might know, if you weren’t skipping your lessons.”

                “I was just trying to help!”

                “And you can help more by learning,” she says. “You are still a foreigner here. Knowledge is the best tool you have to keep things under control. We have been lucky things have gone this smoothly so far.”

                “Because everyone’s waiting to see what’ll happen,” Tsuta says. She’s moved on to the kitchen proper, knife in hand and some of the aforementioned fresh things that can’t be shipped in front of her. “No use causing a fuss if His Royal Madness is coming home victorious.”

                “That’s quite enough,” An-Qi says. Her glasses have slipped and there’s a shadow at the edge of her mouth. “Your Majesty would you please join Her Holiness in the Northern Sanctuary? She was asking to see you after your lessons.”

                Katara nods. “Yeah, of course,” she mumbles. Her retreat is hastier than intended, but she still knows what it looks like when adults are about to argue.

 .

.

.

                 Inoue is deadheading hydrangeas when she arrives. The Sage looks up and smiles. “You just missed Princess Azula,” she says. “She actually ate breakfast this morning.”

                “Is that good?” Katara asks. Azula and good news generally…don’t go together. They are contradictory things. “I’m assuming that’s good. To you.”

                “And to you,” Inoue says. “She is your heir.”

                Katara looks down at the red flowers and for just a moment, wishes they were actual fire and would burn everything to the ground. She knows her own family’s history well enough to know what a looming succession crisis looks like. Zuko has been clear on what this loss meant for him, but as the former Fire Lord, Azula is still within the royal line. Which sounds bad on multiple levels. It doesn’t sit well knowing that she could be killed at any moment and the throne returned to Azula.

                That, in fact, sounds like an invitation to assassins.

                Even if they are _waiting to see what’ll happen_.

                “Yeah, has there been any progress on fixing that?” Katara asks. “Actually, given that Zuko’s now pretty high-ranked, can’t we just arrange for him to take over?”

                “No,” Inoue says. “It would require an Agni Kai and that would be an insult to Agni to initiate a duel that’s rigged. We would be forced to consider such a thing invalid.”

                “ _Great_.”

                “But there is possibly another way of bringing him back into the royal family,” Inoue explains. She stands up, white hair flashing yellow in the sunset. She’s not a large woman, is Inoue, yet she is a commanding presence that fills every void in the garden. “An-Qi tells me you are of royal birth. Tell me, what are the expectations of a royal daughter in the South?”

                Katara deflates. It hadn’t crossed her mind, since the whole _you’re-the-Fire-Lord_ thing started, that it is in fact a thing. Fire Lord is no different than Chief, just in a different country with a different culture and a different people. Her father has steered clear of bringing any of this up with her, but she’s also the second child. Sokka has probably gotten the family talk by now. As the firstborn, it’ll be on him to continue the line.

                But if he can’t, then it would be on Katara. Except here, there is no Sokka and the crown she wears is heavier than anything her people would have asked her to bear.

                “If I weren’t a waterbender it’d be no different than anyone else. Make a good marriage, preserve the Tribe,” Katara says. “As the last waterbender, it’s a little different. My purpose is to preserve our ways, our waterbending. Or it was,” she continues, motioning up to the crown, “before this happened.”

                “You would have married, yes?”

                “Whoever could impress the elders,” she says. “They wouldn’t issue the demands until I turned sixteen.” Katara sighs. It had started as such a lovely day. The sun has faded into the softer fire of autumn, the whisper of rain on the horizon. She’s actually looking forward to winter. It will be a winter with sunshine, for once in her life. “You want me to marry Zuko.”

                Inoue nods, hands folded behind her back.

                “I probably should have seen this coming.”

                “Probably,” Inoue says. “Even if it were him wearing that crown, we likely would have encouraged this match. Politically it’s the best match possible.”

                “Seriously?” Katara asks. “I’m a Southern peasant by most standards.”

                “You and Princess Azula are the only royal daughters to survive the war,” Inoue says. “If her situation were different, we would likely have offered her to King Kuei. As it is, that will be impossible, but we did still get you. You have the potential to calm the Water Tribes and having a Fire Lady of foreign birth would ease things with the Earth Kingdom, and work at home to show the people here that the old propaganda was wrong about the other elements.”

                “Assuming the North didn’t beat you to it.”

                 “Yes, that is true,” Inoue says. She nods towards the palace to their left. “You do have Princess Azula to thank, though. She is the reason you will not be married until your eighteenth summer.” Katara must be showing her confusion, because Inoue laughs. “You said you would have been eligible your sixteenth summer in the Tribes, correct? Here, if you were of common birth, it would be your twentieth.”

                “That’s kind of old, isn’t it?”

                “We have a mandatory military service here, and the twentieth summer is the first opportunity for most to settle down before being deployed,” Inoue explains. “For royals, it has changed some. Sons were never expected to marry young, and concubines were once common. Lord Sozin, for instance, married three times. His first two wives both failed to provide an heir, so he married Lady Hanuel, who eventually gave him Lord Azulon.”

                “I’m guessing she started as a concubine?” Katara says. Men and society: always predictable and awful. Let’s only teach women healing, and keep them locked up with only minimal training at all, and maybe sell them to the highest bidder. “Charming.”

                “She was also fourteen to Lord Sozin’s sixty-three,” Inoue says. “Lord Azulon was in his thirties when he married the thirteen-year-old Lady Ilah, and it was her influence that set the eligible age for marriage at fifteen. You’ve actually got Lady Ilah to thank for quite a bit. Life for women improved greatly with her as our Lady.”

                “And Azula got it to eighteen?”

                Inoue beckons her towards the central shrine. Katara’s never actually been inside, for all that it’s an impressive structure. There’s jeweled panels along the walls, and wrapping around the doors. Gold dragons twist up the pillars and trail along the stairs. Inside, she finds scrolls set up in the still-unfamiliar Traditional Fire.

                They’re set up with two scrolls connecting. She thinks if one is twisted, it will unwind the other and show the full text. Inoue proves this when she adjusts the scrolls just to the right of the door, moving until she settles on a panel only half filled with writing. “Daughters are rare in the royal line. More now than ever,” she says, tracing the writing to the edge. “Princess Azula is the first is over a century. Did you know that?”

                Katara shakes her head.

                “It doesn’t seem to be common knowledge,” Inoue says. “The then-Prince Ozai had made the unusual move of marrying a woman a year older than himself, and it seems to be partly Lady Ursa’s influence that he petitioned to move the age of eligibility to eighteen. Officially to allow Princess Azula a chance to finish her education.”

                “That’s a surprisingly not-awful thing,” Katara says. Living here is weird, if only because she’s learning just how human the monster haunting the world really is. But there’s a large disconnect between it all. How could a man who arguably loved his family, who enjoyed gardening and poetry, turn into the same man who so horrifically abused his son and terrorized the world? “So I’d marry Zuko when I turn eighteen, assuming we’re not all killed before then?”

                Inoue nods. “This is good for you. He is something of an outsider, but he is still of the Zhulong dynasty. Marry Zuko, and win over Princess Azula’s loyalty, and you will be successful as Fire Lord.”  


.

.

.

 

                “Wait, what?” Zuko looks at Katara like she’s grown a second head. An-Qi had informed him of the betrothal, because the Head Sage apparently isn’t taking any chances on this and introduced it as a requirement not a choice. “What does Azula have to do with any of this?”

                “She thinks we need Azula to keep the loyalists in line,” Katara says. “Which, I mean, she’s not wrong. Azula’s a better politician than the two of us combined.”

                “She also tried to kill us.”

                “Yeah, there’s that,” Katara says. “Inoue thinks it can be done.”

                “Does she have any advice on getting my sister to be less homicidal?” Zuko asks. It’s after dinner, when they’re supposed to be other places, but she’d sought him out. This is, admittedly, not what he’d been expecting. A _what fresh madness is this_ about the engagement maybe, but not a possibly serious discussion about his sister in his mother’s favourite garden. Katara’s found a seat on the edge of the fountain, looking completely natural in this setting.

                More than he probably ever has, at least.

                “She’s asking to bring in some younger nuns,” Katara says. “Azula apparently never actually finished her education, so Inoue thinks private tutoring might help. Eventually maybe joining me in my classes.”

                “Azula always did like school,” he says. “Which, don’t skip lessons, please. I don’t want to be yelled at because you’re not where you’re supposed to be.”

                “I was helping Tsuta with the aid requests,” she says. He thinks she might be flushing. She blends in with the evening too well. It makes him miss the blue, if only because it stood out against the muted native colors. “We need to be prepared in case the war isn’t over.”

                “I know, but you need to be prepared for any backlash,” he says. “They’re not going to wait forever.”

                “Just until news arrives,” she says. “I think Inoue is right. We need Azula. She probably knows more about what’s going on than we do.”

                “No probably about it,” he says. His sister had all the makings of a spymaster when they were young. She was, actually, in Ba Sing Se. But domestically she had fewer advantages. Everyone knew who she was, and everyone knew to keep their mouths shut around her. “We need Ty Lee, too.”

                Katara’s head tilts to the side. “Huh? I can understand Azula’s involvement, but what does the circus freak have to do with anything?”

                “She was a circus freak,” he says. “She travelled across the isles. You don’t just need Azula, Katara. You need a spy. Ty Lee never liked working for Azula, and you can probably turn her easily.”

                “Do we even know where she is?”

                He shakes his head. He’s look, of course, to find out what happened to Mai and Ty Lee after Boiling Rock, but neither one has shown up in the prison records. They wouldn’t be kept at Boiling Rock, not with Mai’s uncle as the warden. But there’s dozens of off-record prisons that don’t officially exist.

                “Azula will know,” he admits. His sister is unlikely to tell them anything, is the only problem. Azula has all the power in this. She always does. And at some point she’s going to use that to her advantage. He appreciates that the Head Sage seems convinced his sister can be a productive member of society, but he knows Azula well enough to know that’s impossible. Azula will never settle for not being in control, and for good reason. She’s always been better at everything: firebending, politics, history, art—

                “What was that?” Katara asks. She’s moved to standing, stepping a bit closer to him. “What does art have to do with any of this?”

               “Azula always liked art," he says. He hadn't realized he'd said any of that, but it is what it is, and Azula always did enjoy art. "That painting in the study. The one with the cherry blossoms and the poem. She made that.”

                “So, what? Give her art supplies?” Katara looks skeptical, and he can’t quite blame her. “Do you know what she normally worked with?”

                “Paint. Calligraphy. I don’t think she ever did much with pottery but it’s worth a shot,” he says. His only memory of Azula and pottery involves him with a face full of clay after she unceremoniously threw it at him. It took a week to wash it all out of his hair. “She always liked glasswork too. It was good for her firebending studies. She once made a set of glass-handled brushes to use.”

                Katara nods. “Okay, yeah. We can look for them and I’ll talk to Yin about finding the materials.”

                “Yin?”

                “Dressmaker,” Katara says. “I’m supposed to be meeting with her soon.”

                “Be careful,” he says. The last thing any of them need is Katara being killed by a rogue dressmaker. It’d be an assassination for the history books. Death by sewing needle. “Please. Most of these people come from old families. There’s no telling what they might do.”

                Katara smiles shyly, he thinks. It’s getting harder to see as it gets darker. Disconcerting, what with everything. “So if I wanted to go fishing with Tsuta,” she says, “you’d come with us?”

                “What?” he asks. “Fishing? With the cook? Where? Why?”

                “Because we’re going to need it,” she says, all shyness dropping away and he has to doubt seeing it in the first place. “We’re sending out almost all of the palace’s food for distribution and Tsuta and I got to talking about what’s around. She offered to teach me how to hunt for clams and other things to see if it’s a valid source.”

                “Yeah, I can come. I used to do that with Uncle,” he says. Weird. “I’ll talk to An-Qi about arranging it. And you really need to figure out your guard.”

                “I thought that’s what you were doing.”

                “I am, but—”

                “And Tsuta did call you my guard dog.”

                “ _What_?”

               

 

 

               

               

               

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> do any of these chapters currently have titles? no? i'm only working on chapter seven and totally not titling anything. 
> 
> I know the fire nation and marriage stuff is a little awkward, but also historically accurate for royal brides in the real world cultures/eras the fire nation is based on. the concubine system will be elaborated on later, because while technically all of them were married to the emperor/fire lord for some it was merely in name. it's also literally the only way the timeline issue could be fixed. with canon's timeline, either no one in atla is actually human and women can procreate into their eighties and older with zero issues (and apparently natural septuplets are possible with no fatalities...which...that is not how any of that works). so my choices were either sozin and azulon and roku married women several decades younger than them, or there's an entire generation that hasn't been accounted for and sozin and roku are actually zuko's great-great-grandfathers.
> 
> quick poll: on the dynasty update, would you rather i keep the originals posted alongside the new versions or would you guys be okay with my removing the originals....no. actually. i'm not okay with that. so originals and the reboot are going to be side by side. 
> 
> really sorry about how long this chapter took. sarsaparillia came to visit for a few weeks and i wasn't really writing or on my computer much during that time, but we did do a complete (ish. we both agree the series ended with azula's defeat and refuse to go any further in that episode) rewatch of ATLA. In which I was was delighted to see dogs actually do exist in canon. non hybrid dogs. also at least two cats. polar dogs look like some sort of husky offshoot (they're a landrace, so guess what? they're all mix breeds!) and tiger dog is an actual name for the kai ken.
> 
> also, i just realized i've never mentioned my tumblr here or really crossed the two things. it's largely a sea of nonsense, but once in a blue moon i put up something fic-related. it's persephonesnow, by the way.


	5. to know, water

 .

.

.

 

                “Art supplies?” Yin asks, looking up from where she’s marking a hem. “For Princess Azula?”

                Katara looks down at her as much as she can without disrupting the fabric. Yin’s just slightly behind her, and without a mirror, it makes looking at the dressmaker difficult at best. She can turn enough to see the bright slash of silver in Yin’s black hair. “Zuko suggested it. We need some information from her, and she likes art.”

                “I’ll see about picking up extra supplies the next time I go out,” says Yin. “I’ll be needing some anyway. I have instructions to make you something formal in the event the Avatar returns victorious, or armor in the event that he has lost. If it’s the former, you’ll also be needing something for the presentation, as well as travelling wear for the tour of the Isles. And you’ll need something to wear for the religious ceremonies. And for the funerals, because you’ll not be able to skip those. And then we'll have to start planning for the wedding.”

                “Yin, let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Katara says. She’s listing off _so much_. And  _wedding_. “Armor and formal. And whatever you’re doing right now.”

                “Oh! Sorry. This is just a mock-up for measurements,” Yin explains. “It helps me with tailoring if I have something that’s already fitted to your body. Assuming we don’t die in the next week, I’ll redo this in another few months to account for any growth. You’re only fifteen, right?”

                Katara nods. “Have you ever made armor before?”

                “Not really,” Yin says. “My grandmother will probably be the one leading on that. Waterbenders have different requirements. An-Qi will probably have to take us into the archives for designs.”

                “Looking at history?” Katara says, holding out her arms. She looks down at the dress she’s currently wearing. It’s something of Azula’s, close to the formal court clothing she’s seen in paintings around the palace. It’s long and red, with long sleeves that have had to be slashed and marked to account for Katara’s longer arms. She's afraid to move too much, if only for the slender pins close to her torso, where fabric has been cut apart and new pieces added for something Yin called  _ease_ , but really is just about Azula being abnormally skinny and Katara being, well, Water Tribe. 

                “We’re not at war anymore,” Yin says. “So maybe it’s time for the Fire Lord to not be so imposing. There’s a lot of softer designs from the pre-war eras. Less spikes and some nicer colors.”

                “Less spikes and nicer colors are always good.”

                “Always,” Yin says, nodding. “Those designs came out of the theatre. I think it’s time they went back.”

                “And you need art supplies for all of this?” Katara asks. She remembers her own lessons in fabric-making, the dyes and beads. But paintbrushes are something she's not considered. 

                Yin makes a sound in the affirmative, and she moves over to where the robe worn at the coronation is folded up. One of the historians was supposed to come by to take it back to whatever hiding spot they found it in, but Yin now takes it out and unfolds it, carefully arranging it to show the complex pattern on the fabric.

                “All of this was done by hand,” Yin says, tracing an outline of the wave. “It’s a mix of careful dyeing and, on this one, a lot of hand-painted details. You won’t need anything this elaborate until your wedding, but I’d like to use some of the indigo detailing in other things,” and she points to the blue. “Which, this is indigo. It creates the richest blue, but it’s not been very valuable since the war started. I should be able to get a lot cheaply.”

                “I take it someone’s mentioned the economy?” Katara asks. There’s a quiet affirmative from Yin and she sighs. “Thank you, then. And don’t use anything from the colonies.”

                “You think we’re going to lose them.”

                “I think it’s possible,” she says. “My grandmother had to settle disputes after my father left. Assuming countries aren’t too different from bickering clans, I can guess at what’s coming.”

                Yin stifles a giggle. “Do clans have issues like colonies?”

                “You’d be surprised,” she says. “Land disputes are always the worst, especially when you have different cultures involved.”

                And if Pakku genuinely takes men South, it will get worse. She doesn’t trust the North to not try something. They made their opinions of her Tribe perfectly clear.

                “So native only?” Yin carefully folds up the robe once more. “Water Tribe usually wears furs, correct? You’ll roast alive if you try to wear that here, even if we are milder in the winter. I’ll see what I can do.”

                “Thank you,” Katara says. “Really.”

                “I’m the one who should be saying thank you,” Yin says. She smiles when she sees how confused Katara is. “My grandfather lives in Jang Hui.”

                Jang Hui. Katara can feel the mist on her skin. It’s heavy water, everything run down, and she can almost hear the thick _slip-slop_ of the polluted river on the village’s legs. There’s the cough in lungs in a body too small, the feeling of desperation.

                She feels a world away from the Painted Lady, some days. And then it all comes back.

                “Is everything okay?” An-Qi asks, knocking at the door. “Sorry for interrupting, Yin. I was hoping you would be done by now.”

                “Oh, no, it’s alright. I was just finishing up,” the dressmaker says. “Your Majesty, do you want to go change? I finished adjusting the hem on your breeches this morning.”

                Katara nods and disappears behind the folding screen in the corner of the room. From this side, all she can see is the dark landscape of pale blossoms. Flowers, again. There’s flowers everywhere, she’s starting to notice. In paintings, in vases, in the vast gardens that she’s increasing certain make up the majority of the palace compound. She frowns, tracing the petals with her hand. Just what is it with this kingdom and flowers?

                It’s been almost two weeks since the comet, and things have been a whirlwind. That’s the part Katara doesn’t quite understand. If this had been the South Pole, it would be unmitigated chaos until things calmed down. And by chaos she means dogs running around everywhere, bits of fur flying everywhere, maybe a few spilled bottles of wine, and probably some fish guts scattered on the walls. Possibly a weapon stuck in the ceiling, if her brother is involved. There’d be at least one house destroyed.

               But here, everything has stayed calm. Almost like it was holding its breath, just waiting for a chance to start over again. Maybe it’s the sheer size of the place. Two cities occupy the caldera, after all, and that’s more than enough space for people to continue on as normal with little no repercussions from the extreme minority who also happen to live here and order everyone around. She thinks of the Earth Kingdom, of the way King Kuei is so insulated against the outside world that the outside world knows next to nothing of him.

                Is that going to be the way it is for her?

 .

.

.

 

               “The short answer is no,” Wenzu explains. The tutor adjusts her glasses for the third time, and pulls yet another book from the shelves. There are already twenty on the table Katara’s seated at. _Twenty_. Several of them thicker than her arm and she’s really quite regretting asking Wenzu any questions that weren’t related to the day’s actual lessons. Then again, military structure and how it relates to social class on the primary islands is something that sounds like it came out of nightmare.

               “Historically the Fire Lord was not seen as a god themselves, but rather as the descendants and heirs of the Heavenly Mother,” Wenzu explains. “You’ll have to talk to Her Holiness to get the full story on that. Mythology isn’t really my strong suit. But the Fire Lord has never really been separate from the Isles. While the Fire Lady and any royal children might be restricted to the caldera, the Fire Lord themselves would regularly travel around the Isles. That loosened up a bit during the war, particularly under Lord Ozai and Lady Ursa.”

               “Because of Ember Island?” Katara asks. She should probably ask someone how that house has fared. It’s a lovely place, all things considered, and it’s well placed to act as an emergency shelter.

               Wenzu nods. “Ember Island, yes. The villa has a rather interesting history,” she’s started mumbling, and Katara waits patiently for the next bit. Another book, added to the pile. “Practically, though, it’s simply not feasible to keep all the Fire Isles under control without regularly checking in on them. Typically, there’s a team of diplomats who do it, but once a year the Lord themselves will tour the Isles.”

               “So I’m not going to be in the palace forever?”

                “Oh, no, you’ll be stuck here for quite a while.”

                Katara groans, her head making an audible _thump_ on the table.  She should have known. She’ll never get to the beach with Tsuta. Or anyone, for that matter. “What happens if I’m needed outside the palace?”

                She hears a chair scraping against the floor, and looks up to see Wenzu taking a seat across from her. Books are carefully pushed to the side, until the tutor can look at her clearly.

                 “It will only be temporary. We’ve never had this happen before. I’ve looked. Repeatedly. Even in the restricted section and I’ve requested access to the court documents. But the consensus is the same all around,” she says. Katara is pretty sure Wenzu is probably just barely older than Zuko. For all that she knows history and the like, Katara is pretty sure Wenzu probably had other plans in her life. Things that didn’t involve training a foreigner Fire Lord and possibly dying in an inferno. “We have no idea how people are going to react. We don’t know if there’s going to be rebellion in the streets or what.”

                “And you’re all willing to protect me?” Katara scoffs. “Me? A waterbender from the Tribe your navy has spent the last fifty years trying to wipe out?”

                Wenzu shrugs. “Yeah, but you’re also the one who saved us,” she says, and holds up a hand when Katara starts to object. “No, I mean it. Just hear me out. I was a little kid when Lord Ozai took over, but I remember my mother panicking when it happened. The war has remained popular among the nobles, but for the rest of us it’s kind of been bad. We watch our sons and brothers and fathers leave and never come home. We watch as food gets rationed more and more when things go badly, and when we can’t get some of the materials we need to fix things because the only source is the colonies and that’s all controlled by the nobles.

                “And most of us have heard about Jang Hui,” she continues. “The villagers kind of went on a charm offensive for you. They’ve been undercutting fish prices at bigger markets since the river’s been cleaned up and they’ve been really loud about the waterbender who helped them and got the Avatar to help too.”

                “I can’t imagine the nobles are happy about that,” Katara says, only half meaning it. That’s the second time today someone has mentioned Jang Hui. She’s starting to think it probably means something.

                Wenzu smiles and adjusts her glasses again. “No, they probably aren’t. They’re not happy about a lot. Ever. You’ll probably get the worst from the Natsume, since their daughter was odds-on favorite to be Fire Lady.”

                “Knives?” Katara guess, and then has to remind herself of the girl’s name. Mai, she thinks. Another flower. Zuko rarely talked about her. Most of the time it was just Azula this and Azula that, if he bothered to talk about anything from his past that wasn’t his father. Which wasn’t often. “Sorry.”

                “Don’t be,” Wenzu says. She picks through the books until finding one of the ones bigger than Katara’s arm. She sets it down and starts flipping through it until she finds something, turning the book towards Katara. “You should ask Tsuta about her. _Knives_ is polite compared to some of what’s I’ve heard.”

                “It’s polite by Toph’s standards too,” Katara says. “Especially for someone who tried to kill us. Several times.”

                Wenzu chuckles and taps the book. “She’s actually got a pretty interesting family history, though. She and her mother were among the last of the Seal Islanders. So how about we put off the military and whatnot and focus on the who’s who of the Fire Nation? Probably not a bad idea for you to know who’s probably going to be poisoning your wine.”

                “A rogue’s gallery of nobility?”

                “And some geography lessons,” Wenzu says, pushing a book towards Katara. “Read this while I go find us a decent non-military map.”

.

.

.

 

                The palace is tall enough, in places, that the world beyond the caldera is visible. Katara finds a set of stairs that spiral up to a pavilion so high she’s surprised there aren’t clouds alongside it. She keeps a lantern with her and set it down towards one of the four dragon-wound pillars at each corner. Then she settles in, looking briefly out over the ocean. She’s facing west, given where the sun now sits heavy on the horizon, fractals of light and colour scattering over all the water that separates her from Ba Sing Se.

                She adjusts the book in her hands, and flips it open to where she’d left off. Wenzu hadn’t shown her the title when assigning it to her. But here it is: _Genealogy of the Great Islands_.  The entire back half is dedicated to Zuko’s family, but she stops a few pages ahead of it.

                Seal Island. It’s a small island, compared to the one she’s now on, and it sits on the southern edge of the archipelago. There’s more distance between it and the rest of the islands, she remembers, which follows given the history. It was conquered, and relatively recently. 

                Conquered by the _Fire Nation_.

                This is Mai’s family. Or her mother's, at least. She'd not known that before Wenzu's lesson, that Tom-Tom's mother is a second wife. Mai's mother was of Seal Island blood, and here is their crest. Katara traces the design listed as the family crest, and then twists it enough that the lines begin to make sense. It’s stylized to hide the origins, she guesses, but she grew up tracing the patterns of her people. She knows what a blue flutter lobster looks like. She grew up eating an easier-to-find cousin.

                But why would a Fire Nation family be using such a design? How would they even know what they are? Unless the North has been trading them, but she doubts that. The lobsters live in the depths of the coldest waters, down where the light cannot reach. They’re beyond rare, and what’s more they require specialized fishing equipment. Her grandmother told her stories. These creatures were only caught and served for the most holy holidays and only to the Chief.

                So why is it here?

                She’s read over the history section repeatedly. Seal Island was uninhabited for time out of mind and then it wasn’t. The people who lived there were master navigators, with boats small and fast and sounding suspiciously like Water Tribe. They were dark-skinned and skilled swimmers, ducking in and out of the waves like seals as they fished and sought out pearls. Like the Water Tribe.

                Seal Island is now abandoned. There’s something about a storm and food shortages, but she just keeps coming back to the boats and the swimming and the blue flutter lobster emblem. There’s a story, passed down among her people, about the long journey south and the ships they lost along the way. It links back to the Painted Lady, and the spirits in the rivers, the ocean, the fact that she is surrounded by water despite being in a land of fire.

                The South has lost much of their history in the war against the Fire Nation.

                But what if the Fire Nation has lost its own along the way?

               

 

               

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm still relatively new at dressmaking, but I've tried to account for the likely differences between Azula and Katara. I personally headcanon that there are physical differences between benders and non-benders, as well as benders of different elements. In this case, Azula is going to be (eventually) tall and have little fat reserves, both because she is from an equatorial island nation but more extreme because she is a firebender and needs to not be heavily insulated to account for increase in body heat. As for Katara, I personally think that waterbenders are built somewhat like seals, physically. Thick fat reserves (normally, because they'd freeze to death without them. Katara will still be nowhere near as skinny as Azula and the other FN women, but she is going to be skinnier than the Water Tribe women still living in the poles. Mostly for a change in diet. With their climate, the FN in general is going to favor lighter foods) and fairly aerodynamic and perfectly built for swimming and diving. 
> 
> I'm not sure I addressed this in the last chapter, but I've always considered Azula to be artistically inclined. Mostly for the focus. So calligraphy, the odd painting, and glasswork, because the delicate firebending it would involve. And despite how grossly the arts were downplayed in the Fire Nation (a country with a thriving theatre likely has a rich arts culture), Azula was likely formally taught everything from music to painting, etc... in her education as a court lady. We know from canon that Zuko is musically inclined, even though it was a one-off comment from Iroh, so it's not too much of a leap to assume artistic inclinations run in the family. 
> 
> As for the comment about the shoulder spikes and theatre, that's actually kinda true. The closest real world example of FN court dress is in Thai theatre.


	6. the coming dawn

 

 

               

Four weeks.

Four long, quiet weeks of _peace_. That’s the part that gets him. It’s been peaceful for the last month. He’s had no ill-effects from the lightning bolt and some days, he doubts it even happened. And then he takes off his shirt and sees the starburst on his chest, but that’s another issue entirely. Zuko has gone entire days being almost okay, for the first time in forever.

Then he sees Katara with the Fire Lord’s flame in her hair and remembers they’re waiting to find out if they’re all going to die in an inferno when his father returns. And if they don’t, then they’ll have to explain to the world what’s happened.

“It’s easy to forget there’s an outside world, isn’t it?” Katara asks. He hadn’t been aware she’d found this pavilion, but he also shouldn’t be terribly surprised. This central palace is hers, as Fire Lord. Theirs, eventually, bar death or some other thing that prevents the Sages’ betrothal from going through.

(Three years, he reminds himself, there’s three years between now and actually have to think about that. And he’s been trying his very hardest to _not_ think about it at all.)

“Yeah,” he says. “Uncle used to tell me that this was once a world of its own. The world only dealt with the Imperial City. No one but the royal family and their servants entered the Heavenly City.”

“Why is it called that?” She steps up to the edge beside him. The wind tugs at them both, light and playful. It’s a beautiful day out. One of the last they’ll see for months, he thinks, looking up at the sky and towards the west. The winter storms will be rolling in soon enough. But for now there’s a break in the heat, with the brightest sunlight pouring onto red-tiled roofs and rolling off into the streets.

Zuko takes a deep breath, exhaling with his eyes closed. The serenity of this place has always been a marvel. Even when in the throes of a coup, or with intrigue stalking down prey in the shadows, the Heavenly City remains tranquil.

“Partly location,” he says, after a long moment. “This is the highest point on the island.”

She gives him a look, eyes narrowed and mouth turned down. She doesn’t believe him.

“And because of the thing that led to the whole _Fire Nation attacks_ thing,” and here he scratches at the back of his neck because history has never been of much interest. It never seemed important, not when his father was possibly trying to kill him and his sister was, well, Azula. He’s pretty sure she has tutors for this, or the Head Sage, or An-Qi. History and that bit of culture that’s just kind of there. How do you explain something you’ve always known without being told it?

“The Earth Kingdom called it _Tianxia_ ,” he finally settles on. This bit he knows, at least, because it was in the scrolls about Sozin and Roku and thus fresher in his mind than some distant afternoon class with a tutor he never bothered to listen to. “Basically one of the earliest Earth Kings got the idea to ‘unify all under heaven’. Which meant the region now called the Earth Kingdom, and the islands to the east. We weren’t that easy to hold down and eventually the Earth Kingdom ideas about ruling all under heaven spread to here. Where they mostly stayed limited to the Isles.”

“Until they didn’t.”

“Until they didn’t.” Zuko runs a hand over his head, careful to not disrupt the hair. He’s had to retrain himself to not mess with it, now that it’s long enough again to be tied into a proper topknot. “The Head Sage would probably explain it better.”

“I already asked Inoue,” she says, easily, like having a friendly chat with the Head Sage is a normal thing. Which it is, he realizes belatedly. Katara is the Fire Lord. It is totally normal for her to have an idle chat with the Head Sage. “She said it’s because there’s a story that your family is descended from a sun goddess and were regarded as heavenly up until Sozin went and did the thing, which he was only able to do because of that story. Because people saw him as being divine.”

She’s got it partially right, he thinks. It sounds incredibly basic and more than slightly oversimplified, but he lets it be because he’s not her tutor and she’s trying to say something else, he thinks. She’ll get the cultural part of this later; that bit of this that just simply can’t be taught, but as has to be lived.

“The Fire Nation started with just this island, right?” Katara asks, and he nods. “What about the others? Were there people native to them?”

"Some,” he says, shrugging. This is not his area and he knows he’s going to wind up giving her the wrong information. “Despite popular belief, we’re a pretty varied people.”

"I know,” she says, quick and quiet. She’s definitely trying to get at something. “Just, what if some of the stories were right?”        

'About what? The divinity? Are you afraid a goddess most people can’t remember is going to smite you?”

She shakes her head. “Not that. I mean about this being a world of its own. Not just here, but the whole of the Isles. What if there’s more than just fire here? What if other elements were represented?”

“It happens, sometimes,” he says. She hasn’t been in the gallery yet, he thinks. The portrait of Sozin’s mother is hidden for a reason. “Not so much anymore.”

“Not that,” she says, shaking her head. “I mean what if there was more from the beginning? I can’t be the only one who thinks it weird that firebenders chose to live in a place that’s practically paradise for a waterbender.”

Zuko has no idea how to respond to that. She has a point. The Isles are a very waterbender friendly place. There’s water everywhere, and the humidity is a stark difference from the desert dry air he remembers in the Poles, and it’s here that he realizes he knows next to nothing about the Southern Water Tribe. An odd place to think of it, for sure, but she’s not often spoken of being a waterbender. What little she and her brother have shared of their culture has been nondescript and only enough to reveal the South and North are virtually in different universes with little to no resemblance to each other, save a tendency to live in polar regions and to produce waterbenders.

(That’s unsurprising, for the most part. North and South split centuries ago. From what Uncle has said, relations between the two have redefined frigid and bordered on nonexistent for the entirety of that time.)

What must this all look like, to her? This land of fire and water. Of extremes. They have snow year-round on some of the taller mountains, and have a desert just two day’s journey southwest of where they stand. They have spirit forests on multiple islands. They have at least five different cultures that he knows of and he lists them off in his head: Bhanti, Sun Warrior, Fire, Seal Island, Cloud Walker. This is a land of extremes, rather than the extreme land she grew up in. It’s a nation that has been the monster haunting the world, while at the same time remaining essentially itself.

It’s a land that knows patience.

But he doesn’t know how to explain that to her. Waiting is enforced in firebending, lest the fire grow too fast and become uncontrollable. That patience is in everything; even his sister shows it. But water requires none of that. Nor does air, however much it may preach it. Only earth surpasses fire in patience, he thinks.

“My mother said the same thing, you know,” he says, instead. “About this being a world of its own. I don’t think she ever liked how quiet it is here.”

“This isn’t quiet,” Katara says softly. “There’s too much life here.”

Too much life? Zuko almost corrects her, because there’s fewer than a hundred people in the caldera right now. Then he thinks of the South Pole. Of the tiny gathering of women and children, and of the fact that that was her entire world for who knows how long. There was just snow, ice, and open ocean. And silence. True silence, the kind that comes from the absence of everything and everyone.

“I don’t know what I’ll do this winter,” Katara says, changing track. There was a moment there, but it’s gone now. “It’s been weird, being places where there’s sunshine all year long. And having nighttime in summer. I’d always thought that only happened in stories."

 

* * *

 

 

She still can’t walk into the plaza. She’s tried, a few times. Sometimes it’s intentional. Mostly it’s not. Like now. She’s got a bit of downtime and her feet turn her towards the east. Like they think she might forget what this place looks like.

Like that’s even possible.

There are still scorch marks cut deep into the marble and Katara has sort of gotten good at making herself forget which marks came from firebender.

(This is a lie. The torched scars across the southern half came from Zuko. The angry clawed ruins along the north are from Azula. The rough-hewn edges along the edge of the south, the ones that resemble the frozen sea after an icebreaker comes through? Those are from her. She hadn’t thought she was using that much force, until the first time she saw the marks.)

The plaza is silent. Wenzu’s map shows it as a place for coronations and weddings, for the major events that bring the Imperial City into contact with the outside world. Happy things. That’s what it was for. Happy things. She closes her eyes, tries to see the painting done of this place during Avatar Roku’s wedding, with the lantern strung from one end to the other and flowers filling the voids where people couldn’t fit.

(Idly, at the back of her mind, it is three years in the future and she wonders if this place will see that kind of celebration again, or if another location can be used instead without insulting anyone.)

She feels the heat across her face before she sees the blue flames, the prickle at the skin as every fiber of her flips between _fight_ or _flight_. She stumbles back, trips on a broken paving stone and finds herself alone. There’s no one here, the rational part of her mind tells her. Azula is in the Northern Sanctuary under lock and key. It’s a memory. Just a memory.

The stones are cool against her palms, and she’s spent enough time with Toph to know the difference between bad stone and good, and this is definitely the kind of good stone the earthbender would love. This place must have been beautiful. Was, actually. She did see it before this, she reminds herself. Everything had looked terrifying under that red sky, the comet drenching cosmic blood onto the world.

And Azula. Azula makes it so difficult to pay attention. Sightseeing and keeping an eye on a potentially homicidal firebender; mutually exclusive things, they are. But still, she’d seen this place and thought it beautiful despite the terror. Just like the rest of the Isles.

“Oh, there you are,” An-Qi says, stepping carefully around the ruins. “Let me help you.”

Katara takes the hand, relief somewhere at the back of her mind that An-Qi didn’t question finding her sitting on the ground in this hellscape. “Sorry. I know I’ve got lessons. Just took a wrong turn.”

 It’s a lie, and they both know it. An-Qi lets it go. In hindsight, this should have been Katara’s first indication that something had happened.

“That’s quite alright. Her Holiness is requesting you in the Northern Sanctuary,” An-Qi tells her. “We’ve discovered some texts in the archives she would like to go over with you.”

This is the point she realizes something has happened, albeit in hindsight, after she’s settled into the Northern Sanctuary with Inoue and the news that’s currently brewing has already broken. An-Qi looks no less put-together than she normally does, but there’s a familiar tension scrawled across her face and shoulders that Katara doesn’t immediately recognize because it’s still too soon after Sozin’s Comet for her to think someone on edge isn’t normal.

So she goes to the Northern Sanctuary with only a polite _thank you_ for several things from An-Qi.

And then the storm hits.

                             

* * *

 

               

Inoue takes a deep breath and sets down her teacup. “This is far from ideal, yes, but try not to panic. Consider this your first trial as Lord. How you weather this will set the tone for your reign.”

 “This isn’t exactly a good start.”

“You actually had quite an auspicious beginning,” Inoue tells her. “Conquest at the height of our glory. If a conqueror wished to send a stronger message that they were unstoppable, they’d be hard pressed to find a better opportunity. Now you must enforce that image.”

"It was an _accidental_ conquering,” Katara says. She hadn’t meant to be any kind of conqueror, really, and this was all supposed to be Zuko’s problem. Not hers. “I didn’t mean to do any of it.”

“And never let anyone know that,” Inoue says sharply. “Never.”

Katara takes a deep breath. The air here tastes of water. The heart of the Fire Nation and it tastes like water. Of all the things. It’s a small comfort, though, and she breathes it in again just to feel the soothing sweet fill her lungs.

Inoue’s right, that much she knows. People are people are people, and the Fire Nation is no different.

Make a stand and proceed to show no weakness. Any hint of the slightest quiver in your stand, and the bears will attack. That was what Auntie Ashuna always said. It was about the North and their greedy eyes on the abundance of the South, but Katara thinks it applies here as well. Whatever the Fire Nation is going to do in response to her being Fire Lord, it will begin now that the outcome of Aang’s fight is known.

Auntie Ashuna and Inoue would likely get along very well, Katara believes, and she misses Auntie with a sharp breath like a knife between her ribs. She needs the aching longing for simpler times about as much as she needs a knife between the ribs, and yet there it is, unbidden when the world’s turtled.

And capsized it has.

They’ve won the war. It’s over. Really over. Peace is at hand, finally. _Finally_. The war is actually over and her brother is safe and alive and on his way to the caldera with Zuko and her family, her world is finally safe. The war is over, and their ragtag army has emerged victorious.

But Ozai is still alive.

_Of course_.

“How could he be so stupid,” she mutters, and buries her face in her hands.

“Avatar Aang is too young to have received a proper education,” Inoue tells her, and she feels the Sage’s bony fingers on the back of her head. “He’s young, is all, and still an idealist. It is one of his strengths, not a weakness, for all that it may seem one.”

“He brought Ozai back alive,” Katara says. “We’ve already got Azula to deal with.”

And everyone in the Fire Nation.

“He will be a lightning rod if not properly dealt with,” Inoue concedes. “Less so than Her Highness, however. Your predecessor did abdicate, after all, in front of witnesses. All in all, it was quite tidy. He abdicated to Princess Azula, who was subsequently challenged for the throne and she lost. Now we have you.”

She says it like she’s thankful about it, and Katara remembers Wenzu’s explanation. It’s a moment of hope, maybe, that there is a chance the Isles won’t completely revolt.

“This is all real now, isn’t it?” Katara asks. Or doesn’t, really, because it’s not really a question at all. Inoue’s solemn nod confirms it and the gentle smile that follows feels about as gentle as a ton of bricks dropped on her gut. It’s heavier than the crown she’s not wearing, and she’d started to think nothing would be worse than that.

“It’s been real all along, child,” Inoue says. “It’s just that we’ve now reached the hard part.”

“I don’t know what to do.”

Inoue nods, and pours Katara another cup of tea. “Nor do I expect you to. Contrary to the examples set by Her Highness and the Vice Admiral, we do not send our children to war. Children are children, not soldiers. The rules of how to handle a defeated enemy are nothing I would expect a girl your age to know.”

“But I need to know,” Katara says. “What am I supposed to do with him? This place is huge, but do we even have the guards to deal with this?”

“No,” Inoue tells her, “we don’t. I would also recommend speaking to General Iroh about this, because I do not think it wise to keep his brother here. I’m afraid it may agitate Her Highness, as well as invite other problems. There are properties among the family holdings that may be appropriate, and the General may know of guards who can be trusted.”

“And in the meantime?” Katara says. It’s the bit about Azula that stands out, and she makes a mental note to look into Azula’s condition because _agitated_ is not something she ever wants to hear in the same sentence with…whatever it is that Azula is to her. Heir sounds like a nightmare, but she’s not a friend or relative and enemy sounds too harsh now that Azula is, technically, her heir and by extension sort of a relative.

And it was war. It’s not like it was anything personal. Well, it sort of was, actually. Genuinely liking Azula is something that presumably can be done, given that she did have friends. But Katara herself has a somewhat lower opinion of the firebender and she’s not entirely sure said opinion can ever be salvaged. That Azula was also representative of and enthusiastically in support of the force that has spent the last half-century slaughtering Katara’s people and making a good-faith attempt at completely eradicating them also played a role. And, of course, the whole almost killing Aang thing.

And then Zuko and the lightning.

Okay, it’s extremely personal.

“It would perhaps be prudent to request the Avatar retain custody until we can find suitable accommodations,” Inoue says. That’s diplomatic in a way that makes Katara wonder exactly what it is Inoue’s expecting. “There is a prison in the Imperial City, and dungeons here in the Heavenly City, but using either would send a very different message than treating him with respect would. You are a conqueror, after all. By default, the tone of your reign is one of violence, which is what this kingdom has been living with for the last century, and the world has suffered for it.”

“I don’t want more war,” Katara says. “But he’s dangerous.”

Inoue nods. “Which why I recommend he be left in Avatar Aang’s custody. Though young and idealistic, the Avatar has shown himself to be capable of great temperance, which is what is needed right now. At the least it will give you time to discuss your options with General Iroh, who I highly recommend you adopt as an advisor.”

Aang is an issue she’ll have to deal with later. There’s still a lingering annoyance that he dared put Ozai and _her brother_ in close quarters for the long journey from the Earth Kingdom to here. What if something had happened?

She takes a deep breath, because something didn’t happen. But it could have and she’s pretty sure you don’t get to be as feared as Ozai is without good cause. What he did to his own son—his reputation is deserved. Aang still put Ozai, alive and presumably well because _Aang_ , on a ship with nearly everyone capable of stopping in that was then on open ocean for an extended time. _Something_ could have been an absolute disaster and she can’t quite bring herself to trust Aang enough to have thought of those consequences.

“I hadn’t really thought of Iroh,” she admits. She should have, admittedly. The man is effectively Zuko’s father. He’s going to be around. “How am I supposed to explain any of this?”

“That I would suggest you speak to your Admiral about,” Inoue tells her, “and that you begin with General Iroh. He has always possessed a knack for unruffling ruffled feathers.

 

               

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone!
> 
> So if you've been here a while, you know how much I hate writing transition chapters. And this one is one big transition that was deleted and rewritten more times than I care to count and I'm still not overly happy with it but this is about as close to good as I can get it. As for those of you who are new, and I've noticed a lot of new readers lately, hello! Welcome to the currently active piece of a very complicated larger work (this fic is an au of my main series, dynasty of storms, that is currently in rewrite hell. so it is an au of an au). 
> 
> On to the actual chapter notes!
> 
> Re: Zuko having no ill-effects from the lightning. There is a reason for that and it'll be dealt with later, but for right now the only person who knows anything about it doesn't know enough about what happened the night after the fight to explain it and because trauma memory forms differently, Katara's not exactly in position to discuss it. 
> 
> As for the east instead of west (per the official map, the Fire Nation is depicted as being west of the Earth Kingdom) that has to do with planets being round. As such, the Fire Nation is east of Ba Sing Se and the seat of the Earth Kings.
> 
> The Fire Nation naturally being patient (despite Azula) is actually is canon. Firebenders have to be more patient because if the fire is built too fast it can go out of control. Given that the Isles have been led by firebenders for centuries, it's not too extreme to assume the training for firebenders has spread into everyday life.
> 
> There's maybe history of a sort between Inoue and Iroh. I don't think it will be explained at all in this fic. It might in dynasty at some point but it happened so long ago that I'm not sure there will be space. It may just be a thing you have to read between lines for.


End file.
